SHOULD WE HAVE PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION?
There are increasing difficulties with this defence of first past the post. One is that it is not very historic. Before the Second World War there were often coalitions and, in any case, the current party alignment cannot sensibly be considered as going back before the re-establishment of the Conservative Party in 1922 over the issue of Irish Independence.
The defence also suffers from the difficulty that our Nation’s social conditions have now changed and a smaller proportion of the electorate is voting. Even during General Elections the results frequently show no more than about 60% turnout of the registered electorate. This is a registered electorate which probably only represents 80% of those who are eligible to be registered as electors.
Also the support for parties other than Labour and the Conservatives across Great Britain has been steadily increasing. This is not only in the striking cases of the nationalist votes in Scotland and Wales, but also in England.
Also the two main post-war Establishment parties, the Conservative and Labour Parties, have ceased in any meaningful way to be mass membership parties. In the late 1950’s the Conservatives had over 2½ million paid up members and Labour had nearly 2 million, whereas the Conservatives now have perhaps 100,000 paying members (if you allow for all their various concessions) and Labour may now have 150,000 paid up members. The Parties themselves are therefore no longer either representative of, or even in touch with significant strands of public opinion. Indeed both parties are now more representative of what the commentator and journalist Peter Oborn called the elitist “Political Class” rather than of any strand of democratic populism.
In these circumstances it is not perhaps surprising even if regrettable that the leaderships of both of these increasingly unrepresentative parties are anxious to hang on to the increasingly undemocratic first past the post.
To illustrate how undemocratic the system is, it is worth considering that Tony Blair won his last landslide majority in the House of Commons in 2005 with the votes of just 21.6% of the electorate.
David Cameron, despite the current unequal size of some constituencies favouring Labour, has won his parliamentary majority with the votes of just over 26% of the electorate.
It is therefore obvious that the “first past the post system” has a tendency to clothe the Establishment party with the votes of only about a quarter of the registered electorate with the parliamentary appearance of being a democratic majority.
Consider also in the recent General Election the numbers of votes required to elect a Liberal Democrat, a Green, SNP, UKIP, Conservative or Labour.
Here are the figures:-
Party
|
Votes
per seat
|
Conservatives
|
34,244
|
Labour
|
40,290
|
SNP
|
25,972
|
Lib
Dem
|
301,986
|
DUP
|
23,032
|
Sinn
Ffein
|
44,058
|
Plaid
Cymru
|
60,564
|
SDLP
|
33,269
|
UUP
|
57,467
|
Ukip
|
3,881,129
|
Green
|
1,157,613
|
It is in these circumstances that parties like the English Democrats, and, indeed, all of those who care for the health of our county’s democracy and for the ideal that the political system should deliver policies which are in accordance with the majority of our Nation, are calling for proportional representation.
There are a variety of systems of proportional representation, the details of which could easily run to the contents of a full (and tedious) text book. Suffice to say that almost all of them deliver results which would be much more representative of the political will of the People of our Nation. As most European political systems show, when not tested to destruction by EU idiocies, (such as poor suffering Greece), proportional representation produces reasonably stable governments which are a better reflection of their country’s national will than our current electoral system.
Robin Tilbrook
Chairman
English Democrats
Definitely. The Tories are changing the boundaries so they will always win via the first past the post. Only PR will ensure that democracy prevails.
ReplyDeletePR would probably make it harder for the EDs to get elected.
DeleteIn any case, PR is not on the radar for the ordinary working people folk of England whose votes the EDs need to attract.
This blog is in danger of losing touch with the bread and butter issues.
John Cleese is a prominent Lib Dem. The Lib Dems went cold on PR when they thought they had an advantage under First Past the Post. Now they see it as the only way of saving their party
DeleteThere will come a time when a nationalist party wins via the FPTP system. This WILL happen and the ruling elites will then squeal and demand fairness (which they have denied to us for decades).
ReplyDeleteFrancis
I hope you are right Francis but I wonder if that will follow violence and a near civil war - not only here but on the Continent and in Scandinavia as well. Interesting to hear that we had coalitions until after the War; the most famous of course was the National Government during the War. Unfortunately, some voters may have been put off PR by our most recent coalition where the Lib Dems were largely hoodwinked by the evil old Etonians and lost much of their support as a consequence. On the other hand, as we are now seeing, the Lib Dems must have been a restraining influence on Britain's - and the world's - oligarchic elites. We now have full on turbo-capitalism and oligarchic rule as in the US. There was also the question of party funding. The Oligarchic Tories through big business have access to mega cash whilst the EDs who fight for the survival of our country and people have pennies by comparison. There has been talk of a system of state funding of parties but I cannot see the Tories ever agreeing to this. As in America, the rich, going back to the days of the rotten boroughs, can buy elections.
DeleteMeanwhile, there was an interesting programme about the First Britons on BBC2 last night. I had expected reference to their origins and that - apart from the enigmatic Basques - they probably came from the Middle East. Had this been the case then doubtless the Left would have screamed, "You see, we have always had Muslims living here", so desperate are they to underscore a multicultural past for England.
First Past the Post delivers a "Double Whammy". It skews election results in favour of the Conservatives and Labour; resulting in the "minority majority" as described above. It also dissuades voters from voting for other parties because they know that their favoured party cannot win under FPtP. So instead, they vote for what they see as the lesser of two evils, or they don't vote at all. We need PR and the sooner the better!
ReplyDeleteClive,
W-s-M.
Reuters
ReplyDeleteMigrants await resettlement away from Greece and Italy as part of the EU resettlement scheme
Slovakia has said it will refuse Islamic migrants and only accept Christians as the EU relocates 32,000 asylum seekers.
Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at home in the predominantly Christian country, interior ministry spokesman Ivan Metik said. "We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?"
The EU Commission expressed its displeasure at the announcement.
"We act here in the spirit of the treaty, which prevents any form of discrimination," a spokesman said.
However Metik denied the move was discriminatory and said it was intended to ensure community cohesion.
It is legal to prioritise Christians who are at extra risk of religious persecution, one EU source said. However turning away Muslims because there are no mosques would be discriminatory and of dubious legality.
Slovakia is due to host 200 migrants under an EU relocation scheme after EU member states agreed to take in 32,000 asylum seekers. The scheme was made voluntary after some countries, including the UK, refused to accept quotas.
The number of migrants arriving in the EU has soared in recent months, reaching a record high of 107,500 in July alone. Most are Afghans, Syrians and sub-Saharan Africans fleeing persecution, instability and poverty.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said, "Resettlement is greatly needed for many refugees who are at extreme risk among the world's most vulnerable groups.
"We encourage governments to take an inclusive approach while considering refugees for resettlement and should not base their selection on discrimination."
Even with proportional representation on the Continent, this does not mean that democracy always prevails and the same financial-political ruling elites seem to float to the surface. I had thought that France had reverted to First past the Post from PR but am not sure. Even so Marine Le Pen seems to be able to break through. Elsewhere, nationalist parties seem to garner about 15% of the vote and this is reflected in the make-up of their parliaments. A spokesman for the Czech Republic, always healthily euro-sceptic and prepared to engage with Russia, has said that through mass immigration and the financial collapse of Greece, the EU is on its uppers. According to a poll, 80% of UK residents do not want any further immigration. This will not stop Muslims obeying instructions and aiming to outbreed us. We need a reduction to the optimum 30m for Britain. The main motorway routes from the South to the North, being the M6 and A1, are now frequently grinding to a halt,, which they will do completely if we do not reduce the number of people and of motor vehicles on our roads. This poll has put Cameron in a real fix re Calais and the French. But they are blocking the Italian border and Macedonia ( a country you don't hear much about ) is trying to cope with thousands coming, presumably via Turkey. As regards Greece, Syriza seems to have been put back into its box. Tsipras has resigned and called and election. They will undoubtedly bring in an ex-Goldman Sachs man to rule. Everything is up for sale, even some of the smaller Greek islands and a German outfit is snapping up the airports even though you were probably find that they are still nationalised in Germany.
ReplyDeleteSeems like the one world plan for oligarchic rule with the help of the useful idiots of the Left has finally met its Waterloo; well let's hope so.
The EU has completely outwitted poor old Greece and the only option they probably now have left is to take up arms.
As regards first past the post, as a friend says every time you vote you just get the government i.e. people who don't really represent the ordinary Englishman and woman at all but only the internationalist ideologies of the Left and Big Money.